In our
daily lives, most of us believe we are free Americans. The average person
can still go about his business, travel where he wants to go, and freely
choose his goals, friends, and career. We still have freedom of speech,
the press, trial by jury, and many other liberties our Founding Fathers
wrote into the Bill of Rights and Constitution. We are still freer than
any other people on Earth.

Yet,
consider the following:

We may
still have fundamental freedoms of speech and the press, but America is
in a transition from liberty to despotism, a halfway house on the road
to tyranny. We already have economic tyranny in America. If you add up
all the taxes you pay, including income taxes, Social Security, sales,
real estate, gasoline, telephone, and dozens of other hidden taxes, government
loots over forty percent of your hard-earned income in taxes.

Yet,
only a hundred years ago, the average worker paid no more than five percent
of his income in taxes. In 1901, there was no income tax, Social Security
tax, or most of the other taxes you pay today. In the Middle Ages, medieval
rulers took about 20 percent of their serfs’ produce. Our government now
taxes us worse than serfs. If government claims the right to forty percent
of your income, it claims the right to forty percent of your labor, and
forty percent of your life. In effect, the people we “elect” have put
us on a chain gang until May 10th of every year, working for the bureaucrats.

Most
parents may not see it this way, but local governments, in effect, kidnap
your children through public-school compulsory-attendance laws. They force
you to send your children to government (public) schools that waste twelve
years of your children’s lives and turn them into illiterates. They then
tax you to support these so-called “schools.”

“War
on Drugs” government SWAT teams can break down your door in the middle
of the night without a warrant, based on the drug tip of a malicious,
anonymous informant, then threaten you in your own living room. Drug laws
dictate what we can or cannot put in our own bodies. These laws tell us
we do not have the right to smoke marijuana, even if we have cancer and
the marijuana alleviates the nausea from chemotherapy drugs.

Government
tells us we cannot commit suicide if we have terminal cancer with excruciating
pain, nor can a doctor assist us to commit suicide. By these laws, government
tells us it now owns our bodies. These laws deny our right of free choice
for important personal decisions in our lives.

Try
building a new home for yourself, and you will run into a hornet’s nest
of building department inspectors, zoning commissions, environment impact
statements, and local agencies who will tie you up in knots. Try starting
a small business and you will need government licenses and approvals.
Local, State and Federal tax authorities, like vultures, will then devour
your profits with their ever-increasing taxes.

Taxes
loot your hard-earned money to pay for dozens of “entitlement programs”
such as Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, corporate subsidies, welfare
programs, health care for illegal immigrants, and now a “welfare” program
for the entire population of Iraq called the Iraq war. Your voluntary
consent is not required for these programs. Government forces you to pay
for them.

Federal,
State, and local police agencies use asset-forfeiture laws to steal the
cars, homes, businesses, and bank accounts of innocent people under the
pretext of a War on Drugs. Victims of drug raids then have to prove their
innocence and sue the agency to get their property back. Asset-forfeiture
laws have turned too many local police departments into agencies for legalized
looting.

Anti-gun
politicians make thousands of gun laws that restrict a woman’s right to
protect herself from a rapist, a homeowner’s right to protect himself
from a robber in the middle of the night, or American citizens’ right
to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. The 2nd Amendment
to the Constitution that guarantees our right to bear arms is under massive
assault. It may be only a matter of time until we lose this right altogether.

Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission regulations can control who an employer
hires, fires, or promotes, how much he has to pay his employees (minimum
wage), and what their “conditions of employment” must be. This same agency
can sue an employer into bankruptcy for “discrimination” or other “infractions”
of its regulations.

The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can stop a home builder from building
homes, a farmer from farming his land, a rancher from grazing his cattle,
an oil company from drilling for desperately needed oil, or a logging
company from cutting down trees to give us lumber for new homes. EPA regulations
sharply jack up the price of oil and destroy property rights in America
for a great and noble cause — to protect “endangered” species like the
Alabama mud rat, mosquito-infested swamps called “wetlands,” and “delicate”
frozen Arctic wastelands that look like the surface of the moon.

The
Food and Drug Administration forces drug companies to spend over $500
million and seven years to get approval for a new drug. It puts pharmaceutical
companies through a regulatory torture chamber that strangles the development
of thousands of new, life-saving drugs. It has made SWAT-team raids on
vitamin stores to “protect” us from Vitamin C and other dangers.

Federal
agents can persecute a religious sect they don’t like, as the Feds did
in Waco, Texas. They persecuted these people partly because the sect owned
allegedly “illegal” firearms, firearms the 2nd Amendment says they had
the right to own. After slaughtering innocent women and children in a
ball of fire, none of the Federal agents were ever prosecuted or sent
to prison for their actions.

Finally,
in response to the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center,
the Federal government passed an “anti-terror” bill that created secret
military tribunals. These tribunals will be like medieval star-chambers,
where defendants’ legal rights will be ripped to pieces, and trial by
jury will be denied.

These
tribunals have set a terrible precedent. It is only a matter of time before
government prosecutors expand the vague definition of “terrorism” to an
ever-widening list of “crimes” that can be used against American citizens.
Government judges and prosecutors will then be able to try and convict
Americans without the “messy” need for juries, proof, evidence, or the
presumption of innocence.

Does
all this sound like “the land of the free?” Government in America is a
growing tyranny. It is a government that would shock our Founding Fathers,
a government they would consider a greater tyranny than the British monarchy
they fought a revolutionary war against. Worse, whatever freedoms we have
left are being taken from us at an ever-accelerating rate.

If you,
my reader, do not see this, it is not your fault. Your liberty has been
taken from you gradually, one new tax and regulation at a time. You have
become accustomed to the taxes and regulations. You think they are “normal”
and therefore nothing to complain about. You mistakenly believe that because
you elect your representatives, and because they enact laws based on majority
rule, that their laws, taxes, and regulations are moral and legitimate.
It is like your wife or husband not noticing you have gained thirty pounds
over the past five years because they see you every day, and the weight
gain was gradual.

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So it
is with gradual tyranny. But if Americans living 150 years ago suddenly
came back to life today, they would be shocked, for they would see the
stark difference in their freedom.

President
Bush and his Republican lemmings continue to waste hundreds of billions
of dollars and thousands of American lives to protect the “freedom” of
the Iraqi people. Well, how about first giving Americans back the freedom
that is their birthright, the constitutional freedoms our Founding Fathers
fought and died for?

Mr. Turtel has
written two books, published over fifty articles, and has been interviewed
in both print and broadcast media on the subject. His latest book, Public
Schools, Public Menace has garnered national media attention – recently,
for example, Dr. Laura Schlessinger featured the book on her nationally
syndicated radio show.

Joel Turtel is
available to discuss his book Public Schools, Public Menace in the media,
at conferences, or with individual groups. Be warned though, you may be
shocked by the revelations he has uncovered in America's public-school
system.